Hey, Moran, Cool Ridge!

Creek to peak on snowmobile and sled, to see how the surface snowpack has fared with this week's warming. Travel mostly in the E-S quadrant with some NE. 

• Low elevations: Brief freeze overnight left a melt-freeze crust that was mostly supportable on a snowmobile mid-morning. By mid afternoon, this snow was wet to the ground. Most steep southerly slopes are snow free. 
• Mid-elevations: From 5-6000 ft, snowpack mostly isothermal - few layers, supportable Melt-Freeze grains at the surface in the AM, wet below. By mid-afternoon, mostly supportable on skis, but ski-grabbing mush on snowmobile.
• Upper-elevation: starts about 6000'. On sunny slopes, 4-6" MF grains, supportable even when not frozen, but slow skiing. On shady slopes, cold snow getting wet. Very sticky. 
• Turns on slopes above 6000 ft released neavy rollerballs that might have coalseced into wet slides on more continuously steep slopes.
• In the drainage where we traveled, we saw one small natural loose snow avalanche from the past few days. 
• On nearby peaks, we could make out several larger wet loose slides on SE-facing slopes below the rocky summit of Red Benchmark.